August 2010 Archive

When it comes to liner technology, the temptation is always to think in terms of cast iron - whether it be grey cast iron or one of the more recent ductile - or aluminium. Each takes its lead from the cylinder block supporting them and therefore, for...
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Time was when the application of the white of a single egg - be that free range or battery, it didn't seem to matter which - was enough to cure that annoying little water leak. Dropped into the top of the radiator, the action of the engine being prog...
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I recently spoke to Emmanuele Nicali of Lesto Racing at the Monza World Superbike races about the company's motorcycle race products. Lesto supplies both road and race motorcycle exhausts to a number of teams involved in various Italian national cham...
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The use of composite materials in racecars is not new; nor does it represent a particular novelty for race engines. The strength, stiffness and low density make them ideal for many components, both structural and decorative.
It is now pretty rare to...
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To many, the words 'fuel' and 'economy' have no real place in the motorsports world. After all, and as everyone knows, to save fuel the driver has to be delicate on the throttle, avoid braking and keep in as high a gear as he (or she) can. And with t...
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I suppose it's the mechanical engineer in me but ever since I can remember I have always been fascinated by complex curves. It may have been the Spirograph I received as a child, rolling one circle around another to produced a series of intriguing sp...
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Dan Esslinger, President of Esslinger Engineering has been building Midget engines since 1990 - "So I guess we're 20-ish years into this thing," he says. In that time, Esslinger Engineering has gone through perhaps 30 iterations of pistons, "That's b...
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Lest you think Fig. 1 here is the remnant of some form of horrific engine blow-up, let me explain that what you are looking at is a ductile iron piston ring. Twisted and bent to all manner of shapes the resulting contortion demonstrates vividly how f...
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For those of you with a high boredom threshold, a constantly recurring theme in my articles for RET-Monitor and Race Engine Technology is to stress the importance of compressive residual stresses at the surface of components which are cyclically stre...
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In the previous article, we looked at the prototype Formula One constantly variable transmission (CVT) system that Williams developed in conjunction with Van Doorn in the early 1990s, and spoke to engineer Arnaud Boulanger who was involved with the p...
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Titanium is a strange material, not least for the myths surrounding it. It is often described as being incredibly hard, or incredibly strong, when the truth is that it is neither. It can be impressively strong compared to its density, but it does not stand out in this respect. It has been very ex… read article »